Mitch Joel

President, Mirum

Mitch Joel is President of Mirum – a global digital marketing agency operating in close to 20 countries. His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon.

What makes a piece of content a television show, a movie, a YouTube clip? It's not a new discourse. It's something that many (including little old moi) have discussed, dissected and drafted articles a...

If you think that creativity will be safe from the automation of everything, you are wrong. It's not a question of "if" creativity and advertising will be automated, it is a question of "when." Whet...

It turns out that nobody knows what's what when it comes to the media anymore. Who do you trust for your news and media? Now, picture that media outlet. Which way does their news slant? Left? Right? H...

For every legitimate and corporately run group like Jeep's annual Jeep Jamboree adventure event and meet-up, you have groups like IKEA Hackers. Formed in May 2006 on a blog, this website is now full of passionate IKEA customers who build their own, unique, projects by modifying and repurposing IKEA products.

The San Francisco based startup Secret (that was founded by two former Google and Square employees) is getting tons of attention, followers and fans. In short, you can write anything that's on your mind, add photos or colors to the background and customize this content while being able to share it, free of judgment, and without attaching any of your personal information or profile to it.

When last year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) rolled into Las Vegas, many were surprised and intrigued by Amazon's presence. They didn't have a typical booth on the trade show floor. Instead, they set up a Kindle vending machine inside the Las Vegas airport (near the ATM and soda pop).

I jokingly tell colleagues in the marketing world, that you can't throw a professional marketer down a flight of stairs these days without the words "big data" tumbling out of their pockets. There's no need to benchmark brands against their competencies with big data because, quite frankly, most brands don't even have a proper definition for what big data means.

The IT and software development companies responsible for the healthcare website are probably neck deep in trouble and pulling all-nighters to get it back up and working at an acceptable level. People think it should all work perfectly. I would be happy to debate that bugs, crashes, delays and hacks are in fact not mistakes but rather a healthy and normal part of a truly functioning technology.

Whether we like it or not, the great discourse and online conversations are being clouded and polluted with spammy comments. If you have ever blogged, you will note how difficult it can sometimes be to sort the wheat from the chaff.

If we are ever to have kids that will benefit from screens, instead of wasting their time on it, it is the adults who will have to do a better job of figuring out ways to turn these devices from a time killer into an idea generator. Technology has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This isn't about how much time kids spend with screens, it's about what's on the screen. Screens are no longer the things we use to waste time and take our collective minds off of our day-to-day lives. These screens have come alive, and a child's ability to understand this, work with them and -- ultimately -- use them to create something is going to be a key indicator of their ability to be successful in life.

The truth is that for under $2,000 you can outfit your audio recording studio with a proper mixing board, pro digital recorder, dynamic microphone, pop filters, mic boom stands, studio quality headphones and more. Here are 6 ways to get the best sound possible out of Skype.

Contrary to popular marketing ideology, we do not live in a multiple-screen world. My world is about one screen: whatever screen is in front of me. Too many brands continue to build digital ghettos where the Web, mobile, social and even e-commerce occupy and have their own, unique, strategies. This leads to brands that are wildly different across their platforms. To put it simply? These strategies are stupid. Here's why.

While the philosophy of why we work continues to evolve and modernize, it still feels like we hold on to the dogma of what business is supposed to be. Perhaps with all of this moral awakening, sharing on social media, connecting to others and events like Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring, we should be paying closer attention to the human bottom line rather than the financial one?

Before you start lighting up those pitchforks and come after us marketers with a mix of mass hysteria and moral panic, take a look at your own online behavior and ask yourself, which scenario you prefer? Go to Amazon and start shopping (presuming you have been there before), and ask yourself, "what is the experience like?"

What is the true value of a comment on a blog? To this date, there is a constant slew of criticism and discourse on the importance of comments. Simply put, there is a strong legion of new media pundits who believe that a blog isn't a blog without comments and the back and forth between the key blogger and the readers.

Thurston and others who have recently talked about their inability to keep up with the influx of digital inputs could be missing the bigger point: this is the inevitable outcome of success. All of this isn't technology's fault. All of this is our fault, because we're allowing the technology to manage us, instead of the other way around.

It's hard to argue that most content-based webpages aren't all that annoying, but there is a cost for access and there is a cost for this content that must be paid by the consumers. Whether this is a paid-subscription model to underwrite the profitability of the business or ad-supported as the model, consumers have to accept that advertising and pageviews are going nowhere.

If Yahoo can acquire sites like Tumblr and Hulu while pushing beyond their history of being a Web portal, spending a billion dollars on a platform like Tumblr and/or Hulu could well be the cheapest way for a company of that size and magnitude to not only save itself, but rebuild its brand reputation as a leader in the digital world.

In the past short while, we have started to see what could only be described as "true online publishing" taking on a new (and pretty) look and feel. We're moving beyond trying to make the Internet look, feel and read like paper -- it feels like the Internet is about to become a true publishing medium unto itself.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that our connected computers will be more a "part of us" than ever before. Many are quick to dismiss wearable technology such as Google's Project Glass as a parlour trick and some are already calling those who use them "glassholes."